“Cadejo blanco”: The drama of being a kid and being in a gang in Guatemala

Malaga (Spain), 23 Mar The American Justin Lerner said today that, after spending six years in a slum in Guatemala preparing his first film, “White Cadejo”, he finds no “difference” between the kids from the gangs and the boys who populate the streets of Boston, where their parents live. “The only thing that differentiates them is being born there and having opportunities or not,” said the director, who is making his debut at the Malaga (south) film festival with his debut film in competition in the official section. In perfect English, Lerner said that what he intended with this film, so real that many of the things it tells are experiences lived by its actors - taken from the street - is “to take the viewer on this journey, where the gangs are, but also the images of who these people are”. “We wanted to meet the real people who live there, who aren't like they're normally portrayed in movies. When I was planning this story, after spending a few weeks in Puerto Barrios, I noticed the young people I hung out with at night, some were involved in this life, these illegal things, and I had a very different image in my mind,” he explains. It had never been filmed in Puerto Barrios and it is clear, he adds, “that we couldn't stop violence from being so present, during the filming we lost several members of the cast,” the director reveals. He spent a whole year looking for the protagonists and three to writing a script that changed with each story that these young people told him; in the end, he says, “there is not a word written by me, everything they say is their own words”. He relied on a handful of professional actors, including Karen Martínez and Brandon López, who were already in Malaga with the film “The Golden Cage”, who served as “coaches” for the new ones. “The first thing was to choose which ones I could act, and then familiarize them so that they would not be intimidated by the camera,” explains Martínez, present at the press conference. “We wanted them to be, to feel comfortable,” he adds. The film revolves around Martinez's character, Sarita, a girl who infiltrates a dangerous gang of young people in the hope of finding her missing sister. On his journey -durísmo-, he discovers that “pain and death can become revulsive for one to evolve, to realize the good that killing can do”. Although the Colombian actress refers to a 'capo', an odious character who is eliminated, the reflection extends to many people who make decisions that are painful for their people; but in the end, Martínez reflects, “sometimes it happens that they only change one for another”. The young actress highlights the work with the actor who gives life to Andrés, Rudy Wilfredo, a boy they found working in a mechanical workshop, because “he was particularly vulnerable”. “He had suffered a lot of losses and lived through very hard situations and we had to protect him so that he wouldn't have much trouble reviving him again, you don't know when a person is going to break, and that was not our intention,” adds the director. Lerner has argued that “these kids get involved in the clicas, in gangs, because they have a family, protection and money, it's not for fun, but for meeting their basic needs.” Lastly, Lerner explained that the white cadejo that gives the film its title is a character from Guatemalan folklore, a wild dog that protects the soul, like a shaman, which only exists in the Guatemalan imagination, “I thought it was a good metaphor for Sarita's journey.” CHIEF water/lml